


It all starts with the weather.

by HariSlate



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Gen, ides of March, maybe bunny/raffles later on, modenisation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HariSlate/pseuds/HariSlate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a modernisation of Raffles, following their first adventure, which may be a bit like the Ides of March.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It all starts with the weather.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I was originally going to do this as a script, but this seems so much easier.

You always read books and stories and... everything, that open up with the weather. It is such an unbelievably British thing. I mean, I am sure that people all over the world open up their books, and write words about stormy nights and calm days and all that jazz, but it is so very English. It is one of those stereotypes. Us British, we so adore to discuss the weather, when it isn’t a remotely interesting topic. You find yourself, stating simple facts, so ordinary, so mundane, that you are bored by your own conversation. But you do it anyway. And perhaps that is what it is about the weather. However much we complain, however many times in five minutes we may look up into the skies, squint, and decide that the sun is maybe slightly too bright to be looking at it, it is not going to change. It will look the same until something important happens, and the wind changes, and suddenly there are big black clouds, blotting out the burning mass of fire and hydrogen and energy (I am not a scientist), and dropping cool raindrops onto upturned faces, causing them to shake in disgust, dropping down under hoods.

It was a pretty dark night. Not stormy, but not necessarily calm. You wouldn’t use calm... clear. Peaceful. Like a forest glade, adorned by wildlife. If you thought about it for too long, it would probably startle. It was cold enough as it was without more snow.

It was too cold to be sat on top of a thin slate roof, too cold to be almost sleeping against the thinly iced, lightly snow-dusted chimney stack, too cold to pull his phone from an inner pocket when it vibrated.

Grabbing the knotted rope, he felt the gentle tug, and pulled gently on his side. It probably wasn’t helping much, but letting go would probably be worse. Pushing out his boot so it caught on the top of the roof, the bit where the two angles meet, the boy braced his head against the stack, and waited. Muffled huffs became ever so slightly more audible, slowly becoming the proof that the boy’s companion was drawing nearer.

The cat burglar, for that was what he was, struggled to his feet, and pulled his friend to his own. Without, well, any ceremony, he set off across the rooftops, without another glance back at his stumbling friend. He looked pretty ridiculous, to be frank. The black and white stripy jumper was taking it a little too far...

Money. It was pretty important stuff. Curiously so. Bunny had to say that the stuff fascinated him. Other than its many, sundry uses, it was a quite simply a curious thing. It was so simple, yet so important. It was the basis of quite possibly every successful civilisation on the planet, and yet... the stuff doesn’t exist. It’s not like... many years ago, when a coin held the value of itself, when you pick up a penny, it is worth... well, Bunny had no real idea (it was a casual interest, a pub interest, not quite important enough for actual research). The American penny is worth more that it is worth, if you got his drift.

I huge amount of money, money that was not held by the holder, could be found in a strip of plastic worth practically nothing, and yet the whole economy is based around debt, and lending.

As Bunny knew all too well.

He was just overly fond of the idea that his debt was a fiction. It pleased him, made him feel slightly less terrible when he got up in the morning. But after thinking the same thing every morning, it starts to wear off by the end of the day, and he would lie awake at night, hoping that something would come up in the night, another -unknown- relation would finally cork it, and leave him another small fortune, and then each time he went to bed, it wouldn’t be so... well, yeah.

Moving on. There was always something. Always something past the dead end job, the novel drafts, and the awkward conversations with... She Who Must Be Obeyed. And he had decided that it was finally time to go looking for that something.

You always see in books and films, where the characters are ‘too proud’ to accept the money offered by close, and not so close, friends. It was curious -not curious. Too many ‘curious’es. It was strange. He remembered feeling that he would turn down any offers of money. For the first while of hidden poverty, he thought that if anybody would have held out a wad of notes, his nose would find itself rather high up, and he would turn away, and act the very model of an affronted young man. But then it gets to the point where you dread eating, because the little blob of food would only make him feel worse. And at that point, a young man from ‘old money’ has no idea. Everything that he was told in his youth, those rules that were thrown at you as laws, they suddenly seem the murmurings of a corrupt government, and you wonder at yourself for ever worrying about cutlery and etiquette and the whole lot of it.

And suddenly, you are stood at the doorstep of a tower block, pulling an old business card from the pocket of your best coat, pressing down hard on the little button that shows the number, and speaking your name: ‘It’s Harry... Harry Manders- Bunny... from school...’ and each word seems like a torment, the moment of silence -perhaps a second, perhaps a year- weighs on your head and your heart and your wind battered, red-raw ears. Then the buzz sounds, and you push the door, the sickness settling at the bottom of your stomach, and it finally enters your head: ‘What. Are. You. Doing. Here.’ Because your legs have committed a treachery, and you were never that hungry, and you haven’t seen him for how many years now. So you close your eyes, and you step up the first step, and the second, and then the next, and it continues, and you are standing there.

The is open, and a young man, wearing jeans and a shirt, not tucked in at the waist, is leaning against the door frame. His face is peculiar. Well, not his face, his expression. His expression is peculiar. His expression had every right to be peculiar. There was, on his doorstep, a young man. He knew this young man, though they had not met in... who knows how long. Maybe five years, maybe eight. A while, at least. And here he was, a past friend, box of pills (purchased at the local Boots) in one hand, a resolute expression in his eye. There was no question of what was going to happen. A slow death, painful, and in the flat of the cricketer and charity spokesman, who was meant to be able to help. What they didn’t seem to understand was... it was hard.

And he was human.


End file.
